This year, Blake Lively played the leading character in the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s adaptation of It Ends With Us. As the movie was supposed to offer her a new opportunity in different roles, the controversies around the film led to a series of backlash.

Right after the movie’s premiere, Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa posted an older interview with the Gossip Girl star titled “The Blake Lively interview that made me want to quit my job” from 2016. The interview was part of the press junket for Woody Allen’s Café Society, and Lively had recently announced her pregnancy. At the beginning of their interaction, the interviewer congratulated her on her “little bump,” with Lively snapping back and addressing Flaa’s “little bump,” who was not pregnant at the time. Since then, Flaa has denied any involvement in the smear campaign against Lively and doubled down on her comments in an interview with The Ankler, where she addresses being mentioned in the New York Times feature about Lively’s lawsuit.

Flaa’s response to the video was massive, with mixed reactions. Some supported her for speaking up, while others condemned her for commenting on Lively’s body, although the journalist directly referred to her already-announced pregnancy. The lawsuit also mentions Kjersti Flaa, which came as a shock to the journalist, as revealed in her recent interview.

“This whole campaign was just orchestrated.”

“My name is just printed in the lawsuit, and there’s not really any context around it — just a headline from a news outlet [that covered Flaa’s video]… But they haven’t mentioned more about my video in the lawsuit because they know that it had nothing to do with [Baldoni’s] campaign, so they could not put that in any legal papers. Instead, they fed it to the New York Times. They saw that they could insinuate that I had something to do with it.”

Her name coming up felt “so shady,” the journalist highlights, as no one contacted her ahead for a comment. “The way it was done was so shady to me, that they never contacted me and asked me about it. I was really surprised by that. I trust [the NYT] reporting, and I was really shocked.” Flaa continued, “When the Daily Mail reports something, they contact me all the time and ask for comments. Especially with a big outlet like the New York Times, I would expect that. So I reached out to them, and I said, “Why did you not reach out to me? What you’re doing is insinuating that I had something to do with it.” I started getting a lot of backlash, people sending me really nasty messages.”

The journalist explained, “The New York Times is so big, and people believe what they read in the New York Times. So they got back to me, I think it was within three hours, and they said, “Well, we can’t correct the article, but we can add that you contacted us.” So they did add a piece. But that was the next day. Most people had already read the article, and the damage is done. But they never got back to me about why they didn’t contact me first.”

Kjersti Flaa Called The Times’ Reporting of Lively’s Lawsuit “One-Sided”

As she clarified again that she was not a part of the smear campaign against Lively, the journalist further weighed in on Lively’s connection to the Times and how it all felt “one-sided.” She shared, “Totally. 100 percent. This whole campaign was just orchestrated, and I was surprised that the New York Times — it seemed like it was all fed by her side, and that surprised me a lot. It was very one-sided.”

The journalist further addressed the damage to her reputation during her conversation with The Ankler. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me in my career, that people are saying I’m lying. It’s terrible. And I feel like the New York Times owes me an apology. I don’t think I’ll ever get one, though, because I know how this works now. It’s like, if they say anything, it’s a liability, if they admit to wrongdoing, and they won’t do that.”